Farmers persist with organic, see results
For a number of reasons including frustration with chemical agriculture, improved economic prospects and concern for nature, some farmers in Punjab are growing organic. Kavitha Kuruganti travelled around parts of the state to meet a number of farmers and dealers of organic products last month.
22 October 2005 - Driven by a great sense of respect towards and love of nature, Harjant Singh, a 42-year-old farmer from Rai-ke-kalan village (Sangat block in Bathinda district) chose to go organic in 2002. He has 35 acres of land on which he grows cotton, wheat, cattle fodder, greengram, etc. He recalls that between 1985 and 2000, there was intensive use of chemicals on his farm. However, he found that the costs were increasing constantly while the quality of produce was decreasing, even as the pest problem could not be controlled.
Harjant Singh started appreciating the fact that while his gross income is high, his costs were increasing constantly and he was left with very little at the end of the season. He began to think seriously about ways out of the trap he had fallen into. He tried out kinnu (a fruit) nursery-raising, flower and vegetable cultivation and so on. However, he found out soon enough that he was using more pesticides than ever.
In the name of diversification, many farmers in his village shifted to soybean cultivation but that did not help either. There was no market support for them. "The vicious circle did not get broken," Harjant Singh observes. Around that time, a friend of his from Doomwali, Kuljeet Singh Sidhu brought him a newspaper clipping which mentioned that four villages in Rajasthan have gone organic, with support from the Agricultural University there. He went visited these villages. Though he found that the organic farming being done was being only on small scale, it inspired him to explore some more.
"It is important to allow the farm to stabilize and revive. I do not want to start calculating profits right now and would like to focus on reviving my land."
-- Harjant Singh
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Harjant Singh then went to the farm of Chowdhary Krishnakumar Jhakhar in Rajasthan. Though Jhakhar was away on that day, Harjant Singh decided to wait a whole day for him to come back. He was very happy to have done so. He understood that to be organic, one of the first pre-requisites is to possess organic seed. Jhakhar himself had 19 varieties of traditional wheat and Singh bought two varieties for five thousand rupees. With this, he began his organic farming.
That year, he raised organic wheat on six acres. Towards the end of the season, the crop started becoming yellow during heavy fog. Singh panicked and ran around for some advice. Jhakhar took some time off and visited him around this time. He advised Harjant Singh to spray some cow urine and cow dung solution. It worked wonders. Harjant's conviction in this kind of farming grew.
Today, Harjant Singh grows traditional cotton on 10 acres of his land. He also grows fodder crops on 2.5 acres of land. On the remaining land, he grows a mix of green manure crops like sunhemp, greengram, blackgram etc. He has been practicing crop rotation amongst his different plots. In his cotton field, there are bird perches arranged and he finds that many birds have made their nests in his fields.
In the beginning, he found that his yields in wheat were almost half his earlier yields. The market prices were low too. He decided to advertise his produce and put out pamphlets in Bathinda and Giddarbaha newspapers, which urged consumers to eat organic and protect their health. He soon found a set of committed consumers, who buy from him on the basis of trust.
Harjant Singh uses a variety of natural products like neem oil, pongamia, ash, cow urine and cow dung, vermi-compost etc., to replace chemical pesticides and fertilisers. Many of these are being bought from dealers right now.
In the case of cotton, he has not been maintaining any accounts about his costs and returns. "It is important to allow the farm to stabilize and revive. I do not want to start calculating profits right now and would like to focus on reviving my land," he says. "There is no other way out. How much can a person run? Punjab is very tired now, with no stamina left. Organic is the only way out," he adds.
Harjant Singh hopes that he can make his farm look good for others to emulate. Earlier, his neighbours used to think he was mad. Now, they are changing and want to learn from him. "I want nature to be protected. I feel good when I eat tasty, nutritious food and when I can feed others as well," he says. Singh says his hope is that Punjabi farmers will change their agricultural practices at least when it comes to producing something for their own households.
For Harjant Singh, the message of organic agriculture comes from his religion too. "Our Gurus have always talked about preserving millions of life forms. We cannot afford to upset the natural balance, just like we cannot afford to upset our body's balance," he says. He urges that farmers need to walk on the path that Gurus have shown and revert to practicing human values instead of destructive demonic values.
Harjant Singh's wife Veerpal is fully supportive of his efforts and feels that some reduction in yields is not as important. "This is better for the health of the family and I feel that our health has really improved," she says.
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Hartej Singh of Mehtagaon in Bathinda district is emphatic that organic farming on cotton is definitely more profitable than conventional chemical farming. He has been farming for 45 years now and has always felt a great attraction towards agriculture. On his 12 acres of land, he grows various crops like cotton, wheat, mustard and vegetables. For the past four years, he has given up the use of chemicals on 4 acres of his land where he grows cotton. He chose to go organic on it because it has a road on two sides and does not get contaminated with the chemicals used by his neighbours. But this year, he had left 2 more acres of his land fallow because he wants to try out organic wheat for the first time in the rabi season.
In 2002 Kharif, Hartej Singh decided to grow his cotton without fertilizers and pesticides. "Even with a lot of pesticides, there were no yields on cotton. I used to read in the newspapers that cotton can be grown without pesticides and that there are many farmers trying it out across the country," he says. He adds that in 1986, he got very fed up with pesticides and wanted to become an organic farmer. However, he was not successful in that attempt as he was not very equipped with knowledge about alternatives. "Now, it is different," he says.